Sigourney and I have a long creative history, dating back to 1985 when we made Aliens. We're good friends who've always worked well together,so it just feels right that she's coming back for the Avatar sequels. Her character of Grace Augustine, as fans know, died in the first movie, so she's playing a different and in many ways more challenging character in the upcoming films. We’re both looking forward to this new creative challenge, the latest chapter in our long and continuing collaboration.

She'll be joining the also-resurrected Stephen Lang along with Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington. As the series features Na'vi, it seems likely that Weaver has signed on to play one of the film's big blue cat people.

The new 'Avatar' trilogy will begin production later this year, which means it's likely we'll start getting more casting information over the next couple weeks, and we'll be interested to see if the franchise -- which 20th Century Fox is going to invest a lot into -- is something that dominates the box office the way the first film did. 'Avatar 2' is scheduled to hit theaters December 2016.